


Ink

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Social Anxiety, Telepathic Abuse, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alternative Universe where the teenage Scott Summers does not become brainwashed into believing that he will grow up into a super villain. Instead he writes Logan a long letter about how much Logan sucks. And then leaves to join the ‘dark side’.





	Ink

**Author's Note:**

> This piece of writing is written in a letter format. It's Anti Schism. Anti Charles Xavier. Pro Scott Summers. And has implications of the Adult Scott Summers having romantic feelings for Logan.

Logan,

I have written this letter six times now and each attempt felt a little closer to what I am trying to say but it is no secret that my interpersonal skills are barely adequate enough to function in society. Perhaps this lack of understanding the full complexity of how to approach a delicate and complicated topic serves me well for once. You have, after all, not shown a hint of understanding any carefully placed commentary on your behavior.

This might be the point where you are thinking of grabbing a drink, having a smoke or even considering to simply not read further. It is your choice but all that will accomplish is to make me right about you. And we both know how much you hate it when Scott Summers is right. So put that drink down and for once in your life take someone’s attempt at telling you that you need to change serious.

I am not going to bother to speak at length about your treatment of me. I know that I just appeared out of nowhere and in a time where things were less than good. I can forgive. I have forgiven you for making me question if suicide would be the solution to a million issues that I’ve been told I will eventually cause. I do not believe you are even half aware of the psychological damage you inflicted with few but painful and harsh words. Perhaps next time something such as this happens, you should consider the age of the person you are speaking to before treating them the way you treated me. Or perhaps you won’t. Maybe it depends on the sex of person, given that you seem to do good by female teenagers.

This letter is not about what you have done to me though. I am capable of coping. I have friends who are my family, who love me and support me. I did not go through any of this trauma alone. But thanks to your choices and stubbornness to stick to them, there is a version of me experiencing much greater trauma completely alone and left without even the very people I have to support me. The people that he believed would never, under any circumstance, abandon him. It puts a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth that I am now aware that there is a very real chance that one day I am going to lose the only family I ever knew.

But their betrayal, their turned backs, they aren’t what I know hurts my older self most. It was yours. It is yours. You have not seemed to ever grasp the full depth of his emotional attachment to you. This isn’t friendship, it definitely is not rivalry. It is the kind of respect, trust and affection that I know myself barely capable of forming. You see, growing up in an abusive orphanage and being experimented on, and brainwashed, is not an ideal condition to develop the ability of forming lasting, meaningful relationships.

The trust that he has put into you is something I am currently not even sure I am at all capable of. Maybe age teaches me a few more social skills or heals some of the damage done. I do not know. I have not had a real chance to speak to myself. Which makes this strange, no? I am writing about his feelings for you while barely having spoken to him.

I did not need to talk to him to figure it out. All I needed was one sentence and one expression to understand. And then I talked to others, like the grown up Bobby. There was also extensive research of events that have been happening to, with and around Mutants at large and the X-men in particular. It almost felt like reading a book written from the perspective of a bigoted Mutant hating asshole.

The way that at large people describe and discuss the topic of whether or not Cyclops is a villain or a hero is, at best, disturbing. At worst it is outright vile. And every discussion of it online will eventually bring you up. As an example of how a real hero should be.

I want to put this into as simple words as possible:

The world at large thinks that a man who has killed hundredth, if not more than that, of people and who has a history of outright abuse and torture of men, woman and children, is the definition of a hero. Why? Because apparently it is completely irrelevant what you have done in the past. You are, somehow, an Avenger and therefore you are by association alone considered a paragon of true heroism.

As I was starting to realize that, I wondered what the public would think if they knew what you do when you leave that pretty school of yours in a black and white version of your uniform. I wondered what they would think if they knew all the details of your past. And then it clicked that nothing would change. You look good as a hero. You are up front, right there in the center of the action, always gruff but somehow oddly charming in your own way. People like that. People like the hero who isn’t clean cut as much as they like the idealized version of Captain America.

What people do not like, never have and never will, is the stoic and awkward leader in the background. The person who carries the weight of the world on their shoulders but doesn’t do the big flashy signs of heroism on regular prime time news. The one who gets flustered easily in conversation or who refuses them altogether. The one that they all just see standing there at the back apparently moving people as if they were chess pieces. People don’t like the ones who can’t manage a charming smile and an easy joke. People don’t like Cyclops for being stoic and focused. And they don’t like Scott Summers for being an awkward, socially inept mess.

And by God do humans love their drama. They spent most of the time hating us but then something happens involving you making a big show and they will be there, licking their lips in anticipation. Two people, two believes, two opposing approaches to the same end goal. It is Magneto and Xavier all over again, recast as Cyclops and Wolverine.

Do you not see what you have become, Logan? You have taken on the stance of the privileged, sociopathic abuser who is half the reason Cyclops even is the person he is. You have put yourself onto a pedestal as the ‘consumable, human friendly’ answer to the bigotry. In a time where there are literally teenage mutants being shot by cops for manifesting their powers. There is a time and place for peaceful protest and quiet revolution. You have failed, utterly, to realize that this is not that time.

Scott Summers is out there actually doing something. Rescuing these new Mutants, teaching them, training them and giving them the choice between your and his approach. My older self has gone through the massive trauma of possession by a cosmic entity which has never been meant to occupy a non-telepathic host in the first place. And yet there he is, shouldering the responsibilities of the world once more. Without a single one of his family by his side.

None of it would have happened if you had not made the choices you did. The Phoenix would have not been split if you had not caused panic among the Avengers. Without the split, no Phoenix Five. No Phoenix five, no destroyed Wakanda, no deaths rating in the hundredth. And without the Phoenix split, there would now not be five Mutants suffering the painful, lasting and incredibly damaging after effects of having been possessed.

The only one that was even remotely equipped to handle the Phoenix Force was Emma Frost and guess what? It was not her who ended up holding on the longest.

It was Scott who did. It was him who kept control of the Phoenix even when four of five parts were already inside him. Only when you and your goddamn bigoted shit friends attacked him, along with the betrayal of his friends and family, that he snapped and took Frost’s piece. And even then he kept it together right up until the point Charles Xavier tried his condescending, guilt tripping and mind raping approach to parenting. And you allowed that.

I want you to think about this for a moment. I want everyone to think about it but I can’t write six billion letters so you will have to hear it:  
**Scott Summers only lost control of the Phoenix Force when he was actively being attacked by the very person that has been abusing him since the moment they met.**

And ever since he has to hear about how Xavier was this almost Jesus like ideal instead of a deeply flawed individual. Everyone, and above all you, is blaming the victim of abuse for defending himself against the abuser.

That is why I am leaving.

Scott Summers trusted you. He valued your advice, your friendship and your help at balancing him out. And what you did in turn was take away his family, turn the narrative around into making him a villain and then point the finger like you have any right to judge him. Any right at all.

I would like to say I despise you. I would like to. But I don’t. I pity you for being unable to admit your own mistake and make anything in your life ever work out after a mistake.

Scott Summers


End file.
